Zendikar has proven to have inadequate mana fixing. The inevitable advice for us is, “Play 18 or 19 lands in a 40 card deck!” Yes, that helps, but then you often end up drawing all lands the whole game. However, Wizards did try. They designed cards that would help with mana fixing, but those cards were rejected… and apparently they were never replaced with appropriate mana fixing. (more…)

Ring of Ma ‘Ruf was a great card idea, but it has two problems. One, it’s too weak. Two, it was given an errata that said you can only get a card from your sideboard with it. (Why? It’s already too weak!) (more…)

One great thing about Type 3 (Standard without rares) is that all our favorite deck types are still viable. Uncommons are pretty essential for making a good control deck in standard, so Pauper seems to go too far. The control decks you can make without rares aren’t too powerful, but they are powerful enough to be worth playing. (more…)

Today’s Unscrewed cards show an idea that I didn’t think of myself: Triple hybrid. I actually did think of it myself at one point, but apparently other people also thought of it before me. Not really surprising. It’s just based on the idea that hybrid cards could give us even more options. You choose between three colors instead of just two. (more…)

Not only will Unscrewed do many fun things that would probably never happen for real, but it will give us the mana fixing that we’ve always wanted. The mana fixing will be balanced, but it will help us avoid mana screw much more effectively than usual. I gave many suggestions to how mana screw could be avoided over a year ago, and Unscrewed will implement some of these ideas. In particular, the idea of split permanents. A card could have two choices: You could play it as a land, or as something else. For example, Vodalian Coast: (more…)

Magic 2010 was released a little bit at a time. Stores would only get so many booster packs at a time, and sometimes ran out of them when people wanted to play Magic 2010 booster drafts. The same thing is happening again with Zendikar. (more…)

My first Magic set, Awakening, was finished in 2007, over 2 years ago. My favorite new mechanic was a wacky fun idea: The untap symbol. It didn’t take me much longer to think of a similar mechanic: The doubletap symbol. I decided that this new mechanic could be used for Unscrwed (Unglued 3). The idea is that you can turn a card upside down to do something quite similar to how tapping permanents work. The difference is that you could doubletap a card, even if it was already tapped (but you can’t doubletap a creature if it is already upside down). The result is that we can get cards like Goblin Prophet, seen above. Goblin Prophet was one of the first cards I thought of that used the doubletap symbol.(more…)

When drafting Zendikar, you will want to decide which colors to play mostly depending on what cards are passed to you. If the rare isn’t extremely powerful, such as a Sorin Markov, you will have to depend on the commons and uncommons, which is 99% of the time. Even if your first pick is a Soren, you need good black cards to be passed to you in order to play him. Here are my 12 favorite common and uncommon first picks found in Zendikar: (more…)

Vanguard was an ancient way to play Magic where players used a card that gave them new abilities. The vanguard card was basically the original planeswalker card, but it counted as you. You could be the Sliver Queen or Gerrard. The problem with Vanguard cards was that both players had to agree to play with them because they gave players more power than was usually allowed. Just like creature tokens were found in Unglued, vanguard cards could be found in Unscrewed packs. (more…)